Exhibition Catalog “Words Fail Me”

17 November, 2021

Medrie MacPhee: Words Fail Me is a catalog presenting the works exhibited in the artist’s solo show with the same name at Tibor de Nagy Gallery (January 30 – March 6, 2021). The book includes 13 plates showing the paintings in the exhibition, as well as texts by Amy Sillman and Nicole Eisenman.

“Over time you have unburdened yourself from the rules of depiction and yet you still depict the feeling of being a witness to something, even if it’s the unfolding logic of your own work.” * – Amy Sillman

“Medrie’s work, however, is too smart to insist on its newness. Her paintings show how exciting deliberation can be.” ** – Nicole Eisenman

Download the publication text here.

* Excerpt from Amy Sillman and Medrie MacPhee In Conversation; ** Nicole Eisenman, “Med School, An Essay” in Words Fail Me: Medrie MacPhee, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, 2021, 43 pages.

Medrie MacPhee, solo show at the Tibor de Nagy Booth in the A.D.A.A. Art Show at the Armory

15 November, 2021

The Art Dealers Association of America: The Art Show brought together the works from artists around the world represented by 47 galleries. The art fair ran from November 4-7, 2021 a the Park Avenue Armory located in Manhattan’s Lenox Hill Upper East Side neighborhood. Tibor de Nagy Gallery was represented by a solo show of new paintings by Medrie MacPhee. Ticket sales from The Art Show raised around $1.2M for Henry Street Settlement, a not-for-profit social service agency in the Lower East Side that provides social services, arts programs and health care services to New Yorkers of all ages. Find out more in this Resnicow and Associates November 8, 2021 news post.

Solo Show Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto, April 2021

14 November, 2021

Medrie MacPhee’s presented new paintings and works on paper at Toronto’s Nicholas Metivier Gallery, from April 1-24, 2021. The exhibition was titled The Weight of Matter. It was her first solo show at the venue. Due to Covid-pandemic related public health restrictions, the show was closed to the public after one week.

From the Nicholas Metivier Gallery press release:

Medrie MacPhee’s innovative approach to space, colour and form is widely admired and respected in both Canada and abroad. Over the years, her work has evolved from architectural landscapes to abstraction, with the concepts of construction, momentum, collapse and renewal remaining central to her practice. A significant shift in MacPhee’s process occurred when she began adhering ordinary materials — clothing, zippers, buttons and fabric — to her canvases. The resulting chromatic patterns she creates using this framework are entirely abstract and yet reference their origins in the subtle presence of human-body derived shapes and contours.

Central to this exhibition is an 8’ by 10’ painting titled, Dark Matter (2020). The title came to MacPhee during the making of the work when she learned about the mysterious substance that is dark matter. Emitting no light, reflection or shadow, it is essentially the gravitational force keeping the solar system from flying apart. This theory resonated with MacPhee as she sees her own process of affixing clothing to canvas as the creation of an underlying matrix or scaffolding, out of which comes endless possibilities for her to explore. For this particular work, MacPhee limited the palette to black and white except for a small blue stripe in the top right quadrant. The simplified palette and bold composition recall the work of Paul-Émile Borduas and Robert Motherwell.

Other works in the exhibition, such as Zest (2020), have been inspired by moments in her recent memory like the specific quality of light she experienced at an artists’ residency, The Bogliasco Foundation, on the Ligurian coast near Genoa in 2019. Social Distance (2020), on the other hand, memorializes an extremely fruitful and concentrated period of working in her studio without the distraction of a social life. MacPhee notes that, “for those of us privileged enough to just stay home and concentrate on whatever vocations we had there was a strange silver lining to the isolation.”

 

Installation views of the exhibition courtesy of the Nicholas Metivier Gallery.

 

 

A Trio of Reviews in The New Yorker, The New York Times and Two Coats of Paint

18 February, 2021

A review of Medrie’s ongoing solo show at Tibor de Nagy from the chief critic at the New York Times, Roberta Smith appeared in the February 17, 2021 issue. Click here to read her concise and insightful text.

Another mention of the Tibor de Nagy exhibition was made in The New Yorker, “Goings on About Town” section. Writer Joanna Fateman treats us to poetic descriptions of the works: “The big compositions’ irregular shapes are plotted out by the seams of deconstructed garments, like parcels of land on a map. In Take Me to the River, a commanding work in bright navy blue, an overlay of white lines suggests fragmented circuitry; Favela is a handsome crowd of mustard, crimson, burgundy, and blue trapezoids. ”

Jonathan Stevenson has penned a thoughtful consideration of the figurative/abstract quandary in relation to the art of Medrie and David Humphrey in their current duo exhibition of works on paper at the New York Studio School gallery. It appeared on February 14th in NYC blogzine, Two Coats of Paint. Check it out here.

Solo show Words Fail Me opens in NYC

22 January, 2021

Medrie MacPhee will be exhibiting a series of new large paintings entitled Words Fail Me from January 30 to March 6, 2021 at Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York City, 11 Rivington Street. A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition with a conversation between MacPhee and the artist Amy Sillman and an essay by the artist Nicole Eisenman.

Opening reception January 30 – 12-6PM. Reservations are required, click here for details.

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In recent years MacPhee began a fake fashion line (RELAX) for artist friends out of cheap discount clothing. Both “high” and “low” gear of mixed gender were cut up and reassembled into outfits with zippers, buttons, notions, other fabrics, and decorated hoodies. A kind of wearable collage where all of the things that might be considered in a painting such as opacity and transparency, shape and line, color and texture were considered. It was this act that eventually translated into the paintings.

Gradually what had been a “fashion” sideline – within a “gift economy” became translated into her paintings. The process begins in 99 cent store bins and bargain basements. In order to realize the potential of what has become a visual “matrix” or scaffolding – the loose grid of low-rise clothing on canvas suggesting shapes, moves, and colors that are then whitewashed over— she begins to paint, to improvise, to erase, to add until the painting fulfills the promise of the original set of conditions. It’s finally out of that matrix that the painting gradually arrives.

Color gives shape to forms recognizably human in origin where to borrow from Nadia Hebson’s essay in Material Matters (Art and Theory Publishing, Stockholm) “the recondite relationship between clothing and agency can be atomized and gender becomes fluid.” There is no tale to tell but meaning and matter are inextricably bound together in ways that conjure up all that can’t be said.

Source: gallery press release

Exhibition of Drawings with David Humphrey opens January 25, New York School

22 January, 2021

Medrie MacPhee is kicking off the Biden era with a duo exhibition entitled Inner Workings: Works on Paper by David Humphrey and Medrie MacPhee at The New York Studio School Gallery.

“Opening” from 4-8pm Monday January 25. Medrie, David and curator Karen Wilkin will be in attendance.

The exhibition runs from January 25 – February 28, 2021. Covid restrictions are in place.

In the words of the exhibition curator Karen Wilkin:

“Both artists build potent metaphors for our difficult present. Humphrey’s compositions trigger recollections of horrifying current events, while MacPhee’s brooding abstractions echo the stresses of the past year. The intimacy of their works on paper intensifies the resonance of their inventions.”

– click here to read the full press release

– click here for a full list of the works exhibited.

– see the website for more details and to see all the photos from the exhibition.

NOTE: Works in this exhibition can be found in the Recent Works on Paper section of this site.
 

Photos of the exhibition